


Ephialtes

by Harukami



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:01:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Ephialtes:</b> Lit. <i>Jumping on you</i>. A term for nightmares coined by Greek physician Galen, 2 CE. An anxiety disorder defined by Dr. John Bond, 1753 CE, about the sense of being crushed or sexually assaulted by an incubus which accompanied a nightmare: "As soon as they shake off that vast oppression, they are affected with a strong palpitation, great anxiety, languor, and uneasiness – which symptoms gradually abate, and are succeeded by the pleasing reflection of having escaped such imminent danger".</p><p>Felix leaves Malkar, but Malkar won't ever leave Felix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ephialtes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [masterofmidgets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterofmidgets/gifts).



**.1.**  
Thaddeus had this habit of tracing his tattoos with a finger, watching them with a little smile on his face. I couldn't imagine that they still hurt him, not so much later, but my own concept of pain was so hideously twisted at this point that I couldn't be sure how long it was supposed to last. Surely they would heal after a few weeks. Yet Thaddeus seemed aware of them at all times.

I remembered receiving my own tattoos, somewhere between the ages of sixteen and seventeen, after Malkar brought me to the Mirador. I had been warned beforehand how painful it was, but truthfully, in comparison to what Malkar liked, it was a relief. The trouble came later, as they swelled and ached and he flung me down when I couldn't catch myself, beat me across the thighs with a crop until those swelled up too. My impulse was still to put my hands down to stop him, and he laughed and laughed.

"Don't want to ruin the tattoos, do you, darling?" he purred, and made me raise my hands out of the way again, for their safety. "What sort of wizard would you be if you let them get damaged?"

I dreamed about it a lot, still. I dreamed about a lot of things.

But Thaddeus would have had no such situation, and Thaddeus touched them with a distracted, fond look, and finally, breathless, I asked him about it.

"Oh, well," he said. "Mark of a Cabaline, of course. No matter where I go, now, they'll know what sort of wizard I am." And then he made a face and added, "Not that it helps, depending. But _I'll_ know."

Of course, Thaddeus was Kekropian. "Then, you mean, regardless of what anyone thinks of a _wizard_ , they'll know you're a Cabaline, not a Eusebian," I said.

His lips pursed like he'd tasted something sour. "Precisely so."

"I can't say I know much about Eusebian doctrine," I began, in a flippant tone I'd taught myself from watching Malkar, and stopped as Thaddeus's expression darkened.

"Good," he said. "It's for the best to know nothing of Eusebian doctrine. I will tell you this: I'd rather go under the needle a thousand times over than have anyone look at me and think I was a Eusebian. The Eusebian school is a school of abuse. The masters take apprentices and break them until they are twisted to be just like themselves. And then they too become masters and take apprentices to break. The thought that someone might mistake me for one of those sickens me, and it should sicken you too. I'll never regret running."

Thaddeus's expression was alive with a vindictive fury and I stared at it, at him, until I felt Malkar yank on the invisible link between us and stumbled to my feet. "I have to go," I said.

"Oh—Felix, never mind it," Thaddeus said, and waved a hand dismissively. "That's what happens if I get on this subject. It's not a concern now, anyway. I'm of the Cabal now, and I can live like it."

"No," I said. "It's not you, Thaddeus. I have an—an appointment I need to get to."

He frowned at me, but waved his hand again. I bowed to him and walked away as if I weren't running back to my own master.

 

**.2.**  
_Lorenzo sends me to the dungeon as he works out payment with the man who had looked me over so thoroughly when he entered the Shining Tiger, and I sit on the bed there and wait. And I wait, and I wait, until I think perhaps the man must have left, but the door opens and he enters._

_He's unremarkable to look at, broad-featured and with long red-brown hair and bland light brown eyes. He meets my gaze and smiles and says, "Come now, darling, don't be so nervous."_

_I hadn't been aware that I looked nervous. I hardly felt anything at all. But I smiled at him and reached out both hands and said, "Please, my lord."_

_"Oh,_ please _," the man said. "I do love to hear that. What should I_ please _do, you sweet young thing?"_

_This is the dungeon, so I know what I'm in for today. It's no different than what I'm in for most days, that's what I think, foolish. Foolish. But I'm a favorite for it, for being one who can keep saying please as I bleed._

_"Please come to me, my lord," I say. "Please do as you wish with me."_

_He comes over, and sits next to me on the bed, and he takes my hand. His own have rings, and I look at them curiously, at his broad unmarked hands underneath. He wears the gold sash, too, and I know what that means._

_"You're a wizard," I blurt out. "But you don't have the tattoos?"_

_"That's right," he says. "I'm not of the Cabal here."_

_"I've never met a wizard who's not from the Mirador," I say breathlessly._

_He laughs, frees one of his hands from mine, and strokes his rings down my cheek. "I imagine there are a lot of people you haven't met," he says, "being a cheap whore, and all. But I think you'll know enough about wizardry when I'm through with you."_

_And then he pulls his hand back and snaps it into my cheek. I feel the rings gouge and I'm twisted, flung down._

_Twisted, twisted, twisted._

_He doesn't finish when I think he'll finish, not after one session. He keeps going. Paid for me all night, he says, so a good slut had better live up to that. Sometimes, for brief moments, he's gentle, an island in a stormy sea of pain, a breath stolen in the middle of drowning. He praises me at those times and I cling on, thank him for it._

_The room's clock is showing that it's nearly dawn by the time he finally leaves. He doesn't seem tired at all. I cannot move my limbs, not properly. I drag myself over when he exits the room and find a bottle of phoenix stashed under the bed. There are times we can only get through things because we know that's there, and the addiction is a worthwhile investment for Lorenzo._

_I take a swig directly from the bottle and leave blood behind on the neck._

_And I think that's enough. I can collapse here for a while. Dawn means that the room won't be in use for a while, and Lorenzo can find someone to lead my numb body back to my own room once the phoenix has taken over._

_But the door opens and Lorenzo tells me, "Good news, Felix."_

_I'm cleaned up hurriedly. I don't care anymore; the phoenix has hold of me enough even with what little I had that everything has stopped mattering. I don't care as I get dressed, I don't care as I'm brought upstairs, I don't care as the wizard smiles pleasantly at me and holds out a handful of gorgons to Lorenzo._

_"You belong to me now," he says to me. "Let's see if you're worth the price."_

 

 **.3.**  
I woke in Malkar's suite in the Fia Barbarossa section of the Mirador and shuddered at the taste of blood mingled with phoenix on my tongue. He'd wanted me for something—an exploration of locks and keyholes, he'd called it, laughing—and that's why he'd called me away when I was with Thaddeus.

I thought about Thaddeus, condemning the abuse of a master of their apprentice. I thought about lock spells, Malkar's passion, and the spiked wheel he'd run over my tongue as he made me leave it out for him. I thought of the bitterness of the phoenix after he'd fucked me, the way it burned on the holes in my mouth, and I thought,

_I'm done._

I'd been experimenting for a while. Locks and bindings. Malkar used them on me, and I learned from it. Like I'd experimented with rope, I learned that the longer you were under a binding, the more you could loosen it. All magic was metaphor, something Malkar had always thought was trite but I'd been starting to believe was true. 

You had to make the knots tighter. You bound them around yourself more but in doing so the rope itself had more slack. 

I turned _I'm yours_ into _I'm your captive_ with a few more words and the binding was no longer a part of me; it was on my skin instead. On the outside of me. 

He'd notice soon and it was my last chance to go back, but I was done with it, with him, with phoenix and with living this way. It hurt. I'd wanted him to love me, but he didn't love me like the phoenix didn't protect me. 

_Goodbye, Malkar_ , I thought, which I knew already to be an exaggeration. Malkar would still be _here_ , but letting go was letting go.

No more phoenix. No more Malkar. No more pain.

I tightened the knots of the obligation de sang and I strained my being out to it and then I relaxed and instead of breaking I let it fall off me, whole.

And then I ran.

He'd know the spell was off me as soon as it was done and he'd come back to try to punish me and my heart was beating out of its cage as I thought about what he'd do to me, but without the binding on me he couldn't find me yet and once I'd established myself as free from him there'd only be so much he could do.

I ran to Thaddeus, because I couldn't think of anywhere else I could go. I hammered on his door until he opened it, bleary-eyed, and I smiled at him.

"Felix, what the hell?" he muttered, in his Kekropian-accented Marathine.

"I'm so sorry," I said. I wondered what he made of me, slurring my words with my tongue swollen. "I have had a disagreement with Malkar and I think it's best I learn on my own from now on, but as you know, I'd been staying in his suite. Could I perhaps—"

He stared at me, and then stepped aside, holding his door open. "I hope you don't mind the chair," he said. "My suite is hardly large enough for two."

"Just for the rest of the night," I promised. "There are plenty other rooms in the Mirador."

 

**.4.**  
_"Good news," Malkar says, and I'm suddenly so reminded of when Lorenzo said it to me that I freeze in place, turning to look at him with wide eyes. He's not done, though he smiles at me mockingly. "Oh, don't look so much like a scared rat. They'll eat you alive in the Mirador if you act like that."_

_He is the one who has made me a scared rat, but I don't dare retort with that. His words slowly penetrate. "The Mirador—?"_

_"That's right," he purrs, "you slow darling. You seem to have learned enough, if only barely, and the timing's good. A change of succession is going on. Your arrival into high society will be questioned far less as they're getting the next Teverius into place."_

_The Mirador. I try to remember what I know of it, but all I can think of is the wizards I've had as clients, and Malkar himself, scorning them, drilling me on the person I would need to become in order to be instated into the Cabal. Fear, mostly. That's what I know of the Mirador._

_And suddenly he's in my face; his hand slams into the wall beside me, a loud sound as he leans up into my face. "Where are you from, you filthy slut?" he hisses._

_My mouth opens. "Caloxa," falls out of it, startled._

_"It'll do," Malkar says, pleased with himself, and he pulls away, starts braiding his hair back tidily. I reach up to do the same with my own. "Don't touch your hair."_

_"Malkar—?"_

_"I'll do it for you," he says._

_I stand and wait patiently. He finishes with his hair, and comes over to me. His fingers run through my hair gently, thumb running down over my earrings. He knows I hate this, just like he knows how much I hate it when he lets go with his right hand to pat my right cheek, where I can't watch what he's doing._

_"Turn around, my darling," Malkar says._

_I do, a sense of dread building in my stomach. I'm facing the wall now, and he runs his fingers through my hair lightly, separating it._

_And then he's shoving me into the wall, slamming me into it so my good eye is pressed into it and my blind one is out; I am blinded entirely, cheekbone grinding into the wall. His other hand pulls down my pants, and he shoves two fingers into me, dry._

_I hiccup a breath but relax for him. It's easier that way, making no sound as he fucks me hard into the wall, slamming my face into it with each hard thrust. Better to just go limp. At least he hasn't pulled out any of his toys, any of his threats._

_As he finishes, I realize that I was tricked again, and feel the binding settle around me, tighten abruptly. The obligation de sang, which requires this sort of contact to cast. I feel nauseous as it tightens, binding me completely._

_"Come for me," he says, and I have no choice but to obey._

_After, as I leak his fluids down my thigh, he braids my hair for me. It will be coming out of queue soon enough; its curls hate proper form._

_"Now," he says. "We'll be leaving soon, so I want you to go upstairs and say a proper goodbye to Hestrand."_

_"But Malkar—"_

_He doesn't permit me to refuse. The new binding on me tells me that._

_"I don't see why you're complaining. You_ like _being treated like an owned slut," he continues pleasantly. "Go upstairs and say goodbye to Hestrand. Then, when you come down again, I'll tell you what I expect of you in the Mirador."_

_What can I do?_

_I go._

 

 **.5.**  
I woke with a crick in my neck from sleeping in Thaddeus's chair, and for a moment the sensation of having felt the binding cast on me was so intense still that I thought I hadn't escaped it after all. But as I calmed down, I searched myself for it and couldn't find it anywhere.

 _I'm free._ I permitted myself to think it, and felt like crying. 

But Thaddeus entered, rapping on the doorframe on the way in from his bedroom. "Awake, Felix?"

"I am," I said, and remembered the manners that had been so carefully drilled into me. "I'm so very grateful, Thaddeus. And so sorry to have disturbed your sleep last night."

Thaddeus shrugged. "Never much liked that man," he said. "He did seem to try to isolate you from contacts you really should have been making. But you must have had an awful disagreement?"

I felt giggles bubble up in my throat and tried to swallow them down. How else to describe the last six years? "Oh, yes," I said. "An awful disagreement."

"Well. You're a Cabaline in your own right, so I can't imagine there will be any problem with you beginning to step out as your own wizard," Thaddeus said. "Though I'm sure there will be plenty of others who'd like to teach you. You've got the right to your own suite, and Giancarlo can direct you to who you need to talk to about that."

"Thank you, Thaddeus," I said again, and tried to seem dignified about it, an equal talking to an equal or a friend to a friend. I'd been playacting that long enough; it just needed to be put into practice even more thoroughly. 

Lord Giancarlo was indeed willing to help, and more. "I'd long been thinking that you could do with education from a Cabaline yourself," he said. "I understand that you had your loyalty to Malkar for finding you and presenting you to the court, but if you need anything..."

He trailed off pointedly, and I bit down on a hysterical bark of laughter. I was none too eager to run from my old master to a new one, and I could only imagine that Lord Giancarlo, of all people, would be happy to strip whatever information he could from me about Malkar, who had no interest in joining the Cabal himself.

I knew what Malkar would do to me if that happened.

"Thank you, Lord Giancarlo," I said instead, flippantly. "But I think I'd like to explore my own interests for a while."

"Of course," he said, his bushy brows heavy with disappointment, and I wanted to laugh at him. "I don't doubt you'll find plenty of opportunity for that."

He did direct me to whom I needed to talk to to find a suite of my own, and he reminded me of court hours since I would no longer have Malkar to take me to them. The thought of that was horrifying enough, to think of sitting across from Malkar in court.

I had begun to wonder what Malkar would do to me when he saw me next, and if and how he would be able to get me alone.

 

**.6.**  
_I have managed to survive my first day in the Mirador and act like it was nothing to do so. I'd kept the story in my mind constantly—lord Felix Harrowgate, the son of a Caloxan noble, related to the dead king, though of course too young to remember any of that when my mother escaped with me._

_My real mother, Methony, had been a whore, and one who sold me to Keeper when I was four. I praise my mother vaguely, her courage in saving me, and need a drink._

_It's a test, and a test that I cannot fail, though less for my own sake than for Malkar's. He's already told me, in excruciating, horrible detail what he will do to me if I disgrace him. If I ever let on to anyone that I don't deserve to stand among nobles, he will tear me open in ways that it makes me sick to think about._

_But it's a test he has prepared for, has been cheating at. My vowels are impeccable, my diction is perfect, my smile is casual and entitled, my balance and poise are perfect, and I am dressed and braided like a proper noble in every way. The court stops thinking it is testing me long before it actually has, because I cannot slip up for a moment. But they stop asking me questions eventually, beyond those about my magical skills, and this, at least, is something that is truly mine._

_And yet, when they're done, Malkar excuses us both as they agree to discuss whether they can admit me—oh, they will, though, Malkar has already told me that they won't pass up the chance for someone with my raw magical talent—and he takes me back to his room._

_"Well acted," he says, when the door is closed. "Nobody will realize that you're little more than a disease among them. An alley cat dressed up like a lion."_

_"Yes, Malkar," I say._

_"But you and I, we know where you're from, don't we?"_

_"Caloxa," I say, by habit._

_He laughs uproariously, tears springing to his eyes. "Oh," he says. "I have trained you well, haven't I? But no. Say it. Where you're really from."_

_I know that this time, he won't tolerate me acting out of line and upholding the role he has taught to me. "Pharaohlight," I whisper._

_"Say it again."_

_"Pharaohlight," I say. "I'm from Pharaohlight. A whore from Pharaohlight."_

_"Well," Malkar says. "You might not be any more than a molly-toy but at least you're sensible enough to know it. Now, come here and show me who you really are."_

 

 **.7.**  
I sat with Thaddeus in the court, and tried not to let my nerves get the better of me. Across the room, I saw Malkar enter with his crowd, a group of power-hungry wizards who hated me for being so close to him and likely would only hate me more for having left him.

They glared at me; I could not look away. Malkar was laughing and talking genially with them and did not seem to notice me at all. He seemed relaxed and comfortable.

I felt sick, nauseous. Like I'd swallowed a lump of hot iron which was slowly cooling in my belly and boiling the water around it.

"What an ass," Thaddeus muttered next to me, and I felt a little better for it.

I kept waiting, throughout the various affairs of court, for Malkar to make a play, to hear his voice in my head, anything. But he didn't say anything to me, and didn't look at me, and I sat and seethed.

It was the most lonely I think I had ever felt.

When court session ended, people mingled, and a young man began to walk our way. I didn't recall having seen him in court before, and I think I would have noticed; I had never seen a boy so beautiful. He was even more beautiful than me, which was not a title I'd give anyone easily.

"Good afternoon," he said when he was closer, and held out a hand like he expected me to kiss it. "Felix Harrowgate, isn't it?"

"It is," I said, and took it, bowing over it a little. He'd come from Stephen's side, and was young enough, around fifteen, that he was likely only just being introduced to court sessions. "Would you be Shannon Teverius?"

He smiled, his perfect blue eyes lighting up. "I'd hoped I wouldn't have to introduce myself."

"It would be to my shame if you did, my lord," I said.

That made him smile more brightly. He hardly seemed human, more like a Cymellunar statue. "I heard Giancarlo talking of you and thought I'd come by to greet you. I'm new to sitting alone in court myself. Perhaps we may sit together sometime?"

Forward, I thought, but here was the Golden Whelp himself talking to me like an equal, like something desirable. I smiled at him. "Perhaps so. I would like that, my lord."

A new voice: "Shannon, for heaven's sake—" and Shannon rolled his eyes as Victoria Teveria came over. "I need to introduce you to a few people, Shannon," and she nodded her head to me, one wizard to another.

I nodded back, a little lower than hers. Wizard or not, she was still of the House Teverii. 

"Later, then," Shannon said, and smiled back briefly before falling alongside Victoria easily. "Honestly, Vicky, it's like you think you can't let me out of your sight for a minute."

I watched them go; beside me, Thaddeus made a faint disapproving noise. "Thaddeus?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said. "I thought perhaps you should know, before you accept his invitations to anything, that Lord Shannon is ganumedes."

Molly. I felt the air leave me as I tried to figure out how to answer. Malkar had threatened me if anyone knew that he and I had been lovers, but— 

—but I wasn't with Malkar, and nobody would assume that just because I was molly myself that I was sleeping with him. 

I was my own person, and could say what I wanted about myself. Thaddeus was a friend, and of course he'd helped me, but that didn't mean that I wanted to bow my head to anyone any longer.

I raised my chin. "Some people are, Thaddeus," I said.

He went white, then red, then settled into a sort of sour look. "I simply thought you should know if you _weren't_ ," he said, and for a moment I thought I saw it in his eyes, that ubiquitous _slut_ that followed me everywhere, but when he blinked I saw that he was merely embarrassed. "Shouldn't like you to be caught off guard."

"Rather," I said, and smiled at him brightly. 

 

**.8.**  
_That night, I dream not of the past but the present._

_I dream of Malkar hunting me down, laughing at me, pinning me to the wall and saying, "We'll soon get it out of you, won't we, how you managed to break that binding," as he forces a spiked object into me._

_I dream of Malkar, pulling me by chains in front of the court and flinging me down naked. "You think you've got a bright young wizard, my lords," he tells the Curia, as I am apparently on trial. "But all you have is a whore. Is that how the Cabal wishes to be known in the public eye?"_

_I dream of Malkar. He whips me. "Tell me where you're from," he says._

_I don't know which answer he wants, but I sob, "Caloxa, Caloxa, Caloxa" with every crack of the whip, and when I wake up in my new suite I don't know whether I am relieved or miserable to find myself alone._

 

 **.9.**  
I made friends in the court, or as close as it was possible to come when you consider I was lying with every word I spoke. But people seemed to find me charming now that I wasn't Malkar's strange Caloxan shadow, was instead Felix Harrowgate, wizard and nobleman charmer. 

I flirted, I laughed, I bled poison from my mouth for others' entertainment, and I was liked the more for it. Telling my new friends, with exaggerated detail, about the things people had done to offend me, seemed to only make me _more_ friends. Everyone loved a gossip.

The only subject which was completely off limits was Malkar, and I made that clear early on. Malkar never bothered me, had not tried once to contact me since I broke the obligation de sang. I resented it, even as I relished it, but it meant that I had no need to talk of him. If people asked, I just said that we had a _personal disagreement_ , and looked hurt enough that nobody brought it up again.

I courted Shannon, as well, and was courted by him—much to Lord Protector Stephen Teverius's disapproval. But we kept things light and sensible, as Shannon wasn't of age until he was sixteen, and just talked, flirted, leaned a little too close as we gossiped. 

The nightmares didn't stop, however. Every night, they tormented me. Sometimes Keeper, sometimes Lorenzo, but usually Malkar. The fact he was avoiding me only left me more paranoid and afraid. I wanted to believe I was free but it felt hollow. Malkar loved waiting games, loved cat and mouse, and I couldn't think that this was anything but that.

It left me exhausted, and one day when I fell asleep in the library, and I woke up shouting from a nightmare, I was terrified that anyone had heard, that I had talked aloud in my sleep.

There _was_ one person who had heard the shouting, though it seemed I hadn't said anything about Malkar—or, thank goodness, let my vowels slip even in my sleep. He was a very old wizard, and introduced himself as Iosephinus Pompey when he asked how often I'd been having nightmares. Perhaps it was the exhaustion that pried the truth out of me, because he looked sick, then haunted, and then he leaned over and made me promise not to tell anyone, and taught me how to ward my dreams.

I asked him, after, what the price was, and he looked at me blankly and just reminded me not to tell anyone. No threat or price with it. Just that request to not tell anyone. He'd get in trouble.

I was so exhausted I nearly cried. 

But that night I didn't have a nightmare, nor the night after that, nor the one after that. He'd warned me I'd need to sometimes let it through, or I'd get myself sick off the lack of dreaming, and my memories of what phoenix was like made me obedient. Sometimes you have to force yourself to feel.

But I improved. My behavior became more natural as the nightmares became fewer. If they had liked me before, they had no idea how vivacious I could be when not forcing it.

And the day after he turned sixteen, Shannon invited me to the theatre, and after, he invited me back to his room.

"I'll be gentle with you," he said sincerely as he undressed me, as he pressed me back to the bed. "I promise. Tell me if anything hurts," and if it wasn't his first time, it was at least near to it.

But he kept his promise. He pinned my hands and kissed me and pressed into me with plenty of oil and moved carefully, smiling up at me and moving with a panting deliberation to make it good and I think I came from that, rather than from anything he was doing for me.

After, I kept moving on him, making sure to wring pleasure out from him to thank him. I made it as good as I dared to without giving myself away.

 

 **.10.**  
The next day, we went to court together, and the news was already around that we were official. I assume Shannon had already told his coterie that if I had gone to the theatre with him I had accepted his offer.

I didn't mind. Rather, I revelled in it. I draped my arm around him and laughed and joked with those around us, flirting with Shannon outrageously, kissing his neck when we both pretended nobody was watching us.

Malkar had always said that I could never better myself, but here I was, lover of the Lord Protector's brother, wizard of the Cabal, free and safe and not even having nightmares any longer.

We were hushed into behaving when the others filed in and court began, items being read aloud and discussed. Under the table, we held hands, and Shannon kept squirming delightedly as I tickled the inside of his wrist with a fingertip.

And then, cutting into my thoughts:

:The lover of a Teverius, darling? I wonder if they know what is polluting their family.: 

I froze. I didn't need to look up and meet his gaze to know he was watching me across the room. His voice was clear and cutting, scornful.

:But it's not a bad idea. Perhaps I'll do the same sometime.: 

"Felix, are you all right?" Shannon whispered.

I drew a slow breath. All I could do was act. I gave him a smile. "Perfectly fine, darling," I murmured back. "Just a bit of a headache."

Malkar did not speak again in my head, but he didn't need to. He could do it at any time, and had shown that. He was still using me, somehow, for his plans.

I tried to stop thinking about it. _It has nothing to do with me,_ I thought, and held Shannon's hand a little tighter. Though I was sure I was hurting him, he didn't complain.

 _What Malkar does has nothing to do with me._ I thought it over and over. Malkar had taught me that I could teach myself through repetition to think a certain way whether or not I believed it, and all I could hope was that in this, as in everything, his teachings would control me.


End file.
